ice on our car window - foto by Smith

We began 2009 living a mile up in the mountains in Oaxaca Mexico down near the Guatemala border. We end it here under the gray cold snowy skies of Cleveland Ohio. This in the trade is known as a wrong-way-play.

Here are the end of the year status reports on our three web sites.

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TheCityPoetry.com - Lady K’s online zine of artists and poets:

2009 - 106,378 pages . . . or . . . 293 pages per day
2008 - 97,769 pages . . . or . . . 268 pages per day

Gained 25 pages a day for an increased readership of 9.3%

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WalkingThinIce.com - Lady and Smith’s blog of travelling 31 months in 10 countries on 3 continents then returning to live in the United Corporate Mistakes of America:

2009 - 869,496 pages . . . or . . . 2,395 pages per day
2008 - 948,601 pages . . . or . . . 2,599 pages per day

Lost 204 pages a day for a decrease in readership of 7.8%

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AgentOfChaos.com - Smith and friends art and poetry (at 3,500 pages, this may be the largest art & poetry site on the web):

2009 = 867,728 pages . . . or . . . 2,390 pages per day
2008 = 982,406 pages . . . or . . . 2,692 pages per day

Lost 302 daily pages for a decrease in readership of 11.2%

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The three sites rack up 5,078 pages viewed per day (this does not count our MySpace pages or Lady’s Face Book page).

I noticed the traffic on Ice and Chaos both dropped drastically as soon as we returned to the U.S.A. to live.

speed of light - foto by Smith

Thought it about time to show you our true faces. We are not of this continuum. We come from far fractals through derived equations parsed in parallel planes. Take us to your Schemer. We mean no harm. We only want your water. Since you are destroying it anyway, we figure it would be ethical to transport it back to our dimension before you ruin it. Don’t worry, we will pay — we’ll give you shiny technological beads for it.

Smith true face - foto by Lady K

Lady K true face - foto by Smith

2 phase - foto by Smith

true face Lady K - foto by Smith

true face Smith - foto by Lady K

side light, under the roof eaves - foto by Smith

Nepalese poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma will be reading tonight at Cleveland’s Mac’s Backs at 7 pm Thursday 11.19.2009 along with San Francisco poet artist Celeste McCarty.

Here’s the Mac’s Backs p.r. release:

Mac’s is pleased to welcome back two friends.

Yuyutsu Sharma is a Nepalese poet and writer who travels the globe when he is not at home in Nepal writing, publishing and distributing books. He last read at Mac’s in March, 2008. Since then he has published Annapurnas and Stains of Blood: Life Travels and Writing on a Page of Snow (Nirala Publications, New Delhi) and Space Cake, Amsterdam and Other Poems from Europe and America (Howling Dog Press).

Yuyutsu has also translated and edited several volumes of Nepali poetry. He is the author of The Way to Everest, an exquisite collaboration with photographer Andreas Stimm. Sucheta Das Gupta from the Himalayan Times said this about Yuyutsu’s poems: “The poems are shining jewels of passion, energy and splendid craft, redolent with vivid, dreamlike visual imagery, strengthened by realistic observation and powered by strong male eroticism.”

Some of our long time customers may remember Celeste McCarty who worked at Mac’s in the early 1990’s. She is an artist living in San Francisco. She developed a reputation for her unique and colorful postcard size paintings when she sold them from her porch stoop in her SF neighborhood. Curve Magazine profiled her in an Open Studio column in May, 2008. Celeste has recently published several books of drawings & words, including Friendly Fire and Shroatables.

Mac’s Backs is at 1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, Oh 44118 fone = 216.321.BOOK.

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Lady and I met Yuyutsu for the first time yesterday when we picked him up at the bus station to stay with us a week, and then heard him read his work last night for the first time as well. I’d read his poetry before and liked it a lot, but he’s one of those poets who are even better in person. Between each poem he’d explain the portion of Nepalese history pertinent to the poem so we had a combination rap session, history lesson, travelogue, poetry reading. Only ten people showed up, but they were all solid poets and artists, so the creative density was high.

Listening to Yuyutsu, I realize I lost my faith and joy in life about a year ago and have consequently become a bundle of negative energy, a constant contrary curmudgeon. I now endure rather than endeavour.

I’ve forgotten about magic, and magic’s forgotten about me. Especially since moving back to the States. While we were traveling for three years, every ordinary day wasn’t ordinary because we were living on foreign soil and each day presented unAmerican images, unAmerican thoughts, and unAmerican cultures which excited my brain as it tried to balance my new life ways against my old life ways which kept my words, thoughts and images flowing.

I’ve become far too down and negative about being back on the Corporate Shores of America. I need to re-realize that life is what happens to you where you are, while you are. I’ve got to re-learn to live by my own motto that this it is the it it is.

If I don’t like my is and wish for what isn’t, it’s up to me to make my isn’t is. I’m a poet, goldarnit, I’m supposed to be positive.

Pacman anybody? - foto by Smith

south east wall of dining room - foto by Smith

Three more of my assemblages / collages.

Runoff, 2003, 11″ x 19″, Smith - foto by Smith

This represents how evolution took us from upright monkeys to the creation of religion - the round rust in the lower right corner is a run-off spout which has a cross and chain wrapped around it. I like this one so much that I gave it to myself.

Loyola Collage, 1979, 16″ x 13″, Smith - foto by Smith

My 1973 graduation diploma from Loyola College in Baltimore Maryland. The Swamp Thing character with creatures on its back is supposed to represent me slogging through academia.

Organ of Worship, 1996, 10″ x 6″ - foto by Smith

This consists of two fotos of one of my 1975 Baltimore girlfriends covered with dress patterns and “the world’s smallest Bible.” The dress pattern’s “lower front facing” refers to the “Organ of Worship” in the title which references the mons veneris region of the fotos.

I feel like I have a lot of ideas in my head and it’s like I’m giving in to excellence (I hope.) I have always had this concept that I just need to give in to excellence, that it’s something one dives into full force. It’s like being carried away in a current, a strong stream. One can give in to excellence and lose sight of the shore, because when one gives into excellence one loses track of quotidian worries. One becomes fully involved with what one is doing. That’s the concept I have of it, at least. What’s kept me from achieving deeply in any one area in my life is that I have too many goals. Right now I’m focusing on two things: running and website design. I’m giving in to website design. I’m giving in to running. It is unfortunately to the detriment of cooking, creating art, watching movies, and spending more quality time with Smith, but I have this idea that I’ll achieve deeply in one area (web design) and then pull back and achieve deeply in another area (like cooking or being with Smith.) Another thing I desire to give into is writing but I want to postpone that for a while. I have this idea that geniuses are not people who are into ‘all things in moderation.’

Lady

inspired by yoko ono

lady